An athlete's training program consists of two parts including a stimulus phase and a rest phase. Training stimulus triggers a physiological response in the body. During rest, the body responds to the training stimulus through adaptation, thus preparing itself to perform the same activity more effectively and efficiently in the future. In other words, the athlete gets fitter and can perform at a higher level. These gains occur during the rest phase. If there is not adequate rest, an athlete's body can not sufficiently repair itself and the athlete is not able to improve performance in subsequent training sessions or races and performance may deteriorate in the absence of adequate recovery.
It is often desired to balance effort with rest and recovery for a successful training regimen. Too much rest means the athlete is not stressing his body as much as he could and therefore is not gaining as much fitness as possible; too little rest means the athlete does not achieve the adaptive gains from the stress. Many athletes constantly struggle to find this important balance and the question that most coaches and athletes aim to answer is how hard to push and how much to rest and being able to successfully determine this fine line can often be the difference between winning and losing.
Due to the widespread use of scientifically proven tools which measure training stimulus, elite athletes rarely struggle to define the intensity, duration or volume of training stimulus that they execute. However, athletes typically struggle to define the amount of recovery to adapt to this training stimulus. High training loads without adequate recovery will result in reduced performance, which if continued for a prolonged period can lead to chronic fatigue and overtraining syndrome.
At least some aspects of the disclosure are directed to methods and apparatus for determining states of recovery of individuals.